mdk-1.0 and snprintf()

"Nelson H. F. Beebe" <[email protected]> Tue, 9 Apr 2002 06:58:40 -0600 (MDT)
Newsgroups gmane.comp.gnu.mdk.bugs
Message-ID <[email protected]>
The mdk-1.0 release contains 30 calls to the nonstandard library
function, snprintf(), in 11 source files.

snprintf() is absent on Compaq/DEC Alpha OSF/1 4.0 and Hewlett-Packard
HP-UX 10.01, preventing successful builds of mdk-1.0 on those systems.

snprintf(), while available on many systems, was only introduced in
C99 (ISO/IEC 9899:1999(E): Programming languages -- C).  Full support
for that Standard is still unavailable in any of the 50+ C compilers
on the 16+ different UNIX platforms that I routinely work on.

While use of snprintf() is safer than sprintf(), since it is
nonstandard, a fallback should be provided, either in the form of
conditionals that revert to sprintf() when necessary, or as a private
implementation of snprintf().

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